Thursday, April 17, 2014

COTTON: Thought to be the favorite, but polls indicate the race is close.

Continuing the recent trend, another poll finds a very close race between incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor and challenger Rep. Tom Cotton.

Jason Tolbert of Talk Business reports that Republican-leaning American Crossroads took a poll last week showing the race tied 39-39 with a whopping 22 percent undecided. The poll surveyed 522 likely voters and has a margin of error of 4.29 percent .

See our previous post for a model from fivethirtyeight suggesting that Cotton may nevertheless be the favorite, but particularly given the source, this is yet more good news for Pryor, who many believed was heading for Blanche Lincoln -style doom just a few months ago.

I suppose this is also good news for local television stations. The race is looking more and more like it will be close battle, which means even more millions will come pouring in. I need an app that will black out political commercials during the NBA playoffs.

More by David Ramsey

An accusation has been lodged against Dean Elliott, the Dillard's lobbyist and former state representative who is running for the District 15 seat in the state Senate, by a woman who claims that he was involved in a 2016 hit and run incident on Tennyson Drive in Conway that left her with severe injuries. Through a lawyer, Elliott says the allegation is false and politically motivated.

During the trial of former state Sen. Jon Woods and consultant Randell Shelton, the prosecution described Shelton's Paradigm Strategic Consulting as a "bogus company." But Rep. Jana Della Rosa, who paid Paradigm in 2014 for help with campaign messaging, said that Shelton did legitimate work for her.

KARK/Fox 16's push to do something about Little Rock violence includes a spotlight on people trying to make a difference — in this episode Antwan Phillips, a lawyer at Wright, Lindsey and Jennings.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson apparently felt the burn from KARK's exclusive Tuesday night on his plans to cut state support of War Memorial Stadium in half beginning July 1, 2018. He has a so-far secret plan to make the stadium self-sustaining. We bet that doesn't include state support.

UAMS, pressed by financial problems for several years, told the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees today that it had a $1.5 billion operating budget that doesn't call for deficit spending.

Arkansas Court of Appeals Judge Bart Virden of Morrilton, who narrowly survived attack ads by an outside partisan group supporting his opponent for re-election to a nonpartisan seat, doesn't intend to let the matter drop.

Do what Donald Trump says or leave the country. Is that the embodiment of the 1st Amendment or what?

KARK/Fox 16 reports that Little Rock police have identified skeletal remains found Tuesday in a west Little Rock park as those of Ebby Steppach, the 17-year-old who's been missing since her car was found in that park abandoned in 2015.

Enjoy these photos from today's dedication and re-installation of a new Ten Commandments monument. The first iteration of the monument was installed last June but destroyed within the next 24 hours when it was rammed by a man in a Dodge Dart.